South Region playoffs

[Matt Barnhart (kid)]

"To be the best you've got to beat the best."

That has never been more true if Mary Hardin-Baylor is to win the national title...

They would likely have to beat...

First Round - No. 6 Hardin-Simmons
Second Round - No. 20 Washington & Jefferson
Quarterfinals - No. 3 Wesley
Semifinals - No. 2 UW-Whitewater
Finals - No. 1 Mount Union

[CNU85]

ahem.........you mean CNU, not W&J.

[Ron Boerger]

ahem.........you mean CNU, not W&J.

Ahem .... no, he doesn't   

[Pat Coleman]

"To be the best you've got to beat the best."

That has never been more true (emphasis added/pc) if Mary Hardin-Baylor is to win the national title...

They would likely have to beat...

First Round - No. 6 Hardin-Simmons
Second Round - No. 20 Washington & Jefferson
Quarterfinals - No. 3 Wesley
Semifinals - No. 2 UW-Whitewater
Finals - No. 1 Mount Union

A breeze compared to 2004:

at No. 7 Trinity (Texas) #    W 32-13       
at No. 3 Hardin-Simmons #    W 42-28       
at No. 5 Washington and Jefferson #    W 52-16       
at No. 1 Mount Union #    W 38-35       
vs. No. 2 Linfield # Salem, Va.    L 28-21       

[BDTartan]

Wow, seems like a tough road.  Flip it once and check out how much easier it is for Mt. Union.  Only one top 10 team in their half of the bracket and that's Capital who they whupped earlier this season.

[Matt Barnhart (kid)]

"To be the best you've got to beat the best."

That has never been more true (emphasis added/pc) if Mary Hardin-Baylor is to win the national title...

They would likely have to beat...

First Round - No. 6 Hardin-Simmons
Second Round - No. 20 Washington & Jefferson
Quarterfinals - No. 3 Wesley
Semifinals - No. 2 UW-Whitewater
Finals - No. 1 Mount Union

A breeze compared to 2004:

at No. 7 Trinity (Texas) #    W 32-13       
at No. 3 Hardin-Simmons #    W 42-28       
at No. 5 Washington and Jefferson #    W 52-16       
at No. 1 Mount Union #    W 38-35       
vs. No. 2 Linfield # Salem, Va.    L 28-21       

Good call!

Perhaps I thought W&J went 10-0 like I projected, and moved up to No. 4 or 5, after their preseason ranking of No. 15?

Had that been the case, then...

"To be the best you've got to beat the best."

That has never been more true if Mary Hardin-Baylor is to win the national title...

They would likely have to beat...

First Round - No. 6 Hardin-Simmons
Second Round - No. 5 (change made/mb) Washington & Jefferson
Quarterfinals - No. 3 Wesley
Semifinals - No. 2 UW-Whitewater
Finals - No. 1 Mount Union

[Bill McCabe]

UMHB dominated Trinity and W&J in 2004, and jumped out to a big lead against HSU.  They certainly held there own that year.  I think HSU is a very tough game to start the playoffs, but they would have to play eventually.  The winner of that game I expect to win the 2nd round.  Wesley is the team to beat in our region.

[Ralph Turner]

Bob Gregg and I had this discussion on the Pres AC board.  I have re-copied it for readers here.

South,

While I would have enjoyed the W&J/CMU game, it should NOT have been scheduled.  Had the NCAA not fouled up the mileage situation, W&J SHOULD have been flying to HSU for the first round.

The Mellons are the four seed in the bracket.  Christopher Newport is the five seed and SHOULD be playing at Carnegie-Mellon.  W&J, as the six seed should be at #3 HSU.  Trinity should host Millsaps and W&L/Dickinson at Wesley.

The Regional Rankings, for several weeks, disregarded the published criteria, listing W&J ahead of CNU.

The Captains finished with the same in-region record as the Presidents.  They finished with a higher QOWI index.  They finished with a win against a regionally-ranked opponent (UMHB).  They finished with a win against a common opponent (Salisbury) that the Presidents lost to.

The National Committee, correctly, seeded CNU 5th, ahead of the Presidents.  The ONLY reason W&J is playing CNU and not HSU is Mileage-Gate '06.

CMU/W&J would have been fun.  It would have drawn many more people than Millsaps/CMU.  It would have generated additional income and reduced expenses.  It also would have added to Bracket-Gate '06.

While I would rather be sleeping in my own bed Friday night sted a hotel room somewhere in northern Virginia on my way to Newport News, that would have opened the door to yet another charge of dereliction of duty against the oft-maligned NCAA.

No, Joe's article, while it sounds good, comes up short on the facts of the matter.

+1 karma, bob!  Excellent discussion of the situation.

As the recipient of NCAA Bracket-logic, I would have conceded reverse bracket logic in a CMU-W&J game for these reasons.

#3 HSU is either the 2nd or the 3rd team selected in Pool C. (Capital, then either UW-L or HSU.  HSU beat also UW-SP, and every bit as convincingly as UW-L.)
#4 CMU gets a home game.
#5 CNU has to go on the road.  Strict bracketing should send them to CMU, where I believe they would have won.  Instead, they are the beneficiary of HSU's mis-fortune.
#6  W&J should go on the road.  A quick trip into CMU minimizes lost classtime and gets the student-athletes back to Washington, PA by 6pm Sat night.  That also saves money!
#7  Millsaps can be rightly bussed to UMHB.

For all of the clamoring by some CNU fans, they are the big winners in this one.  I think that they got the easiest draw possible (#6 W&J).  They get (HSU's) home game.  And, as a #4/#5-type seed, they get on the other side of the bracket from Wesley!

The committee could have just looked at Pat's bracket on the projections page, said that is close enough to what they saw in the numbers, used that as the bracket and be done with it, and few woudl have known any difference.  (If the Millsaps-to-UMHB mileage data had been present for the selection committee's use, I wonder if we might not have seen it happen.)

[Bill McCabe]

Ralph, I remember you saying at least 10,000 times that geography trumps everything in the first round.  I'm suspicious of the committee's decisions.  Also, I had asked earlier who is on the committee.  Does anyone know?

[Bill McCabe]

I got this off of the NCAA website:

AD   Al Dorenkamp
  Central College (Iowa)   Iowa Intercol. Athletic Conf. SEP 2008 

  III       AD   Charles S. Harris
  Averett University   USA South Athletic Conference SEP 2007 


  III       CCD, Associate AD / Head Football Coach   Norman Eash
  Illinois Wesleyan University   College Conference of Illinois & Wisconsin SEP 2010 


  III       Commissioner   Kenneth Andrews
  Middle Atlantic States Collegiate Athletic Corp.   Middle Atlantic States Collegiate Athletic Corp. SEP 2008 


  III       Director of Men's Athletics, Compliance Director   Dick Kaiser
  Defiance College   Heartland Collegiate Athletic Conference SEP 2009 


  III       Head Coach Football   Steve Mohr
  Trinity University (Texas)   Southern Collegiate Athletic Conference SEP 2009 


  III       Head Football Coach   Michael C. Maynard
  University of Redlands   Southern California Intercollegiate Athletic Conf. SEP 2010 


  III       Head Football Coach   Michael DeLong
  Springfield College   New England Women's & Men's Athletic Conference SEP 2010 

Is this the committee that seeded and set the playoffs?

[Josh Bowerman]

You beat me to the punch, Bill.  Interesting to note who the two South Region representatives are, and where they happen to be from....

[CNU85]

You could look at it a bunch of ways......the 2 south region guys could've gone either way.....they could've been homeboys and watched out for their own conference...or they could've tried to stick it to their rivals......or maybe the AU guy was a homoeboy and the Trinity guy stuck it to the other 2 TX teams.....who knows? Maybe they duked it out!

[Bill McCabe]

Maybe they should have used some common sense and followed their own guidelines!

[Josh Bowerman]

BINGO--then it's a moot question.   

[Rikki_Tikki_Tavi]

Common sense!! That would be waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay to easy in this instance!! Dont you think!?!?